


Avoidance and Pretend-Ignorance

by allacesandeights



Series: Some Kind of Villain [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Mick knows he just doesn't care, Mick's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allacesandeights/pseuds/allacesandeights
Summary: Captain Cold is screwing the Flash.This should not and will not be Heatwave's problem.Set after The Odd Heroic Act.





	Avoidance and Pretend-Ignorance

Mick Rory is not an idiot.  
Uneducated, yes, on a huge number of topics. But that is mainly because he never cared to learn. No, Mick is not an idiot. Mick is apathetic.

The trouble is, most people have never encountered true apathy – so when they do, they often struggle to comprehend it. Mick Rory can count the things he gives a shit about on one hand. And other people tend to care about the inanest crap, almost guaranteeing him to lose focus, stare blankly or just walk off when people start babbling about their personal dramas - or worse, their hobbies. Mick’s own personal hell features prominently that time of night when those who have had a few too many start putting the world to rights. Loudly.

And so, when various opinions started circulating the bar and the little clock in the corner of the tv screen informed him it was quarter past two in the morning, Mick decided to call it a night. Grabbing a couple of bottles for the road, he pushed open the door and emerged into the outside world for the first time in a few hours. The fresh air washed over him in a cool breeze and heightened the buzz he had going from the drink. After a moment he was able to think sufficiently straight to figure out which direction he was heading and staggered off down the street, lazily humming the last tune from the bar.

Rounding the last corner before the warehouse, Mick’s attention came away from the lighter he was thumbing in his pocket. Annoyance rose up in his mind, an echo from an half-remembered argument, and Mick was relieved not to see any lights inside as the warehouse came into view fully. He and Snart had been staying there for a few weeks now – not an unusual set-up for them, they’d been moving around this way since they were teenagers – but lately his partner had developed some frustrating habits. The kind of habits that made Mick take off for hours, the kind that made Snart more of an overdramatic shit than he normally was. Mick didn’t care how Snart spent his time as long as it didn’t come back to bite Mick in the arse - or more realistically, get him locked up again. Especially these days, because chief among these ridiculous new habits was that he had started screwing The Flash.

Mick was not an idiot.

Snart knew this, but then he figured Snart was counting on Mick’s uninterest to keep him out of his partner’s business. The kid probably had no idea Mick knew, and Mick was happy to keep it that way. As was Snart, Mick guessed. Snart was an exceptionally private person (it was one of his most endearing qualities to Mick) therefore sitting down to have a heart-to-heart about Snart’s unnecessarily complicated choice of boytoy was never going to be on the cards. So, Mick put two and two together and concluded that Snart could deal with his own goddamn awful choices. He had made himself scarce whenever it looked like Red might come around and settled in to wait for this whole thing to blow over. 

In hindsight he realised that he had not accounted for the possibility that this would not, in fact, blow over. The two morons were not going to realise this wasn’t working and calmly go their separate ways. Nor were they going to fuel each other’s rage until they eventually combusted and went up in a spectacle of flames. This fire had started almost as soon as Captain Cold first challenged The Flash, and they had no bloody clue – and now Mick was watching them burn.

Well, Snart could do what he liked. Mick would avoid the whole debacle until it was necessary to break Snart out of whatever prison in to which he got himself thrown. Assuming that he didn’t somehow manage to drag Mick down with him. Avoidance and pretend-ignorance were a solid plan. Just because Mick was loyal to the moron, didn’t mean he was going to inconvenience himself and start playing counsellor.

The plan was becoming increasingly difficult, however, as the flames grew, which was why Mick’s relief turned to weariness as he bolted the metal side door behind him and saw the glow of blue strip lights in the workshop. Even with a good six-hour drinking haze, ingrained experience made Mick wary of getting caught in the deep-freeze that was one of Snart’s bad moods. 

He ducked into the makeshift kitchen, swiping the loaf of bread and the mustard jar on the side, juggling them in one hand so he could still get to the fridge for the ham. Suitably loaded, he headed to the old offices at the back of the building, now converted into bedrooms. Lisa had always preferred a bit of casual B&E into vacant luxury apartments, but they kept space for her wherever they went regardless. Mick wasn’t averse to large expensive beds but experience taught him that neighbours tended to notice the sound of a welding torch at any hour of the day. He knew Snart felt more comfortable in industrial spaces - this, after all, was the guy who thought the intricacy of blueprints was more artistic than any of the so-called masterpieces they stole. Mick could relate to that. One of the first big jobs they pulled was an art heist in Boston, a couple of years after Mick had been released from juvie. He never did understand why the paintings were so valuable - you’ve seen one painting of a ship, you’ve seen them all. Plus, he’d stolen what he thought at the time was a gold eagle. That had been a bitter disappointment. The thing was still knocking about in one of their stashes somewhere.

Dropping his food supplies onto the workbench, he had started to relax back into his haze. His hand was halfway to the radio when the ring of Snart’s phone echoed around the metal walls.  
Snart let it ring out.  
It wasn’t unusual for Snart to get calls in the middle of the night. It wasn’t unusual for Snart to ignore calls when it suited him. There was no reason to think this was anything significant.  
The phone rang again.  
Not unusual at all. Mick busied himself making a sandwich. Everything was fine.  
The phone rang out a third time.  
Beer and a sandwich, then a good sleep. What would he do tomorrow? A bit more work on the bike, perhaps.  
The phone started to ring out once more and before Mick could decide on what his bike needed, he heard a sound that could only be the result of Snart launching the phone into the wall; and it subsequently shattering into several parts and scattering itself about the room.  
Mick sighed. No, he thought, not unusual. Not anymore.  
He had a feeling he might want to prepare if he was going to get any decent sleep that night. Standing up, he began to search about his room, as quietly as his rapidly sobering mind would allow. He had a second to register the sound of the cold gun powering up through the wall before a sharp crack echoed around the warehouse. Mick heard the stream of the cold gun fire without hesitation, followed by a shout and another sound that was very reminiscent of the phone hitting the wall, only bigger and more hero-like.  
‘Len!’ The uninvited guest yelled. ‘What the hell?’  
‘Here’s a tip, Red,’ Len barked. ‘Learn to recognise when someone is giving you the cold shoulder.’  
‘I can’t believe you.’ The Flash didn’t sound particularly injured, Mick thought, which meant Snart was probably halfway to forgiving the daft kid already. ‘This is insane, Len. You have to talk to me.’  
‘I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands.’ Mick could picture Snart’s practically trademarked smirk on his face with those words. Yeah, Mick thought, Snart may be pissed, but he was going to forgive him. He shifted his attention back to his search, trying and failing to not hear the exchange happening through the wall.  
‘Come on, can’t you be serious for just- ‘ Mick wasn’t entirely sure if the kid stopped speaking at that point or the blast of the cold gun just covered it completely.  
‘Lenny! Did you actually aim at me?’ The indignance in the kid’s voice made Mick chuckle out loud and for a second he thought he’d be caught out; but as they carried on without missing a beat he figured he was safe.  
‘You wanted to get serious.’ Snart’s capacity to be an overdramatic shit was infinite.  
‘That is - that was not what I - ’ There was a brief silence that made Mick realise how much he valued it, before the speedster continued unaware. ‘Look, I didn’t come here to fight.’  
‘I don’t remember asking you to come here at all.’  
‘Well I’m not leaving and you can’t-’ Mick was entirely prepared for the blast of the cold gun. If the kid wasn’t then he only had himself to blame.  
‘I mean it, Len, I’m not-’ Another blast. Mick had finished his search of the room to no avail. Where the fuck were they? Mick cracked the door open, still doing his best to avoid being drawn into this latest episode of Why You Should Not Sleep with Your Enemies, and barely bothered to cover his bootsteps as the rapid whirr of the cold gun echoed around the warehouse in quick succession.  
‘Stop, Len,’ the kid was yelling. ‘Do you want me to beg? Please, Len, please just stop, stop.’  
‘Stop what?’ Len was shouting back. ‘Stop being a villain? Stop being a criminal? Stop being exactly what I am?’  
The volume through the wall increased as Mick’s hope for a quick resolution to this fight faded. Good thing he was fairly practised at not paying attention.  
‘I won’t let you do this to yourself, Len. I won’t let you do this to us!’  
A sharp cry and a crash cut through the argument and the walls shook dangerously around Mick. The bloody idiots were going to bring down the whole building at this rate and to hell with tiptoeing around them if this was the result. He started for the other room as he heard Snart shout the Flash’s real name (and wasn’t that going to cause problems) but stopped in the doorway when he saw his longtime criminal partner cradling the head of his archnemesis where he lay limp on the floor. Mick could see the ice burn in a bullseye on the kid’s chest.  
‘Barry,’ Snart was saying over and over as he tried to get a response. ‘Barry!’  
A groan and shift in the tangle of limbs confirmed that the Flash was still with us. Mick thought Snart should be ashamed of himself, making a fuss over one hit. The kid had never gone down for that before.  
‘Len?’ came the feeble murmur across the now silent space.  
‘Barry, Barry, what did you do? Why the hell would you do that?’  
‘I don’t wanna fight you, please, please don’t try to make me.’ The kid had come round enough to fist Snart’s shirt tightly.  
‘I never planned for it to be like this, Barry.’  
‘Expect the plan to go off the rails, that’s what you always say.’  
‘And throw away the plan. That’s what comes next.’  
A beat of silence. Mick was fairly certain the building was safe now though. He was just about to turn away when the Flash’s voice carried to him, small and nervous.  
‘Do you really want me to walk away?’  
This wasn’t Mick’s business anymore. This was Snart’s and it was personal, and Mick wanted out. But he still couldn’t help the brief smile when he heard his partner’s reply, with that edge of sarcasm that meant his mood was finally on the up.  
‘I’d expect you to be faster than that.’  
‘Oh for the love of-’  
At that point Snart leant forward and promptly kissed the rest of those words away.  
Mick did turn away at that point, and his eyes fixed on his exactly what he’d been searching for since this entire debacle began. On top of Snart’s blueprints. Of course he should have suspected the thieving bastard he lived with of being responsible for this.  
Ignoring the Flash’s grunts of pain as Snart helped him off the floor, Mick made his way back to his room, his beer and his sandwich. As he briefly contemplated how much longer this ill-advised rendezvous could last, he put the large, noise-cancelling headphones over his ears and cranked his music up through them, blissfully ignorant of anything else the two other occupants of the building might do next.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> I find Mick a little tricky to write so hopefully it didn't feel too ooc.
> 
> I am working on a sequel to The Odd Heroic Act but this interlude popped into my head and wouldn't leave. Much like the Flash in Mick's warehouse.
> 
> Please let me know what you think!


End file.
